Summary of Defense R.D.T. & E. Programs, Fiscal Year 1982 30.6 5,772.6 6,322.3 Chemical defense material. Patriot..... Division air defense gun. 109 other programs.. Subtotal, 121 programs Programs under $25,000,000: 581 programs under $25,000,000 You have this in your package also. Let's look first at those programs that are requesting over $100 million, and this is just a sampling. There are 29 total, and I have just taken about 10 of these. You see here the MX and the Space Shuttle. Here's the AMRAAM missile I was speaking of. The Trident II missile, the new sea-launched ballistic missile that the Navy wants to get started on. The AV-8B aircraft, VSTOL, an interesting technology. The Navy's air combat fighter. That's the F-18. The Tomahawk cruise missile, ballistic missile defense, the Pershing II, which is a new tactical nuclear missile that we want to bring into our inventory. Most of these I would imagine you have heard of at one time or another. These are really the big ticket items, and there are 19 others. This brings the total to $7.7 billion. Then we go into the other category. You've probably heard about some of these, but I've just chosen these to give you an idea of, again, the variety of technologies that you'll have to come to grips with and the variety of weapon systems. Here's the air-launched cruise missile, and the advanced selfprotection jammer. That's the electronics countermeasure unit that they want to put in the F-16 and the F-18 to jam enemy radars so they can't fire their missiles at our planes. Very high speed integrated circuits. That relates to computer technology, microminiaturization, the computer on a chip. DOD is trying to stimulate industry to come back to DOD and do the sorts of things that the Department of Defense needs to have done. There is really not a heck of a lot of incentive today for a commercial house to do work with the Department of Defense in the computer industry because their requirements are so stringent, and they can go out and make home television games and pocket calculators and these sorts of things and make a heck of a lot more money. So this is an attempt by DOD to stimulate industry to come back to them. Some satellite work. The vertical launch system. Mr. Dickinson, we looked at that. Mr. MOLLOHAN. Is the vertical launch system tied in with the AV-8B? Dr. COOPER. No, Mr. Mollohan. The vertical launch system is something we would like to see and the Navy would like to see put on its ships that would allow missiles like the Tomahawk cruise missile to be launced from under the deck, to come up and go out vertical and then fly off in any direction. Nuclear propolusion is in there. High energy lasers. We mentioned that this morning. Materials technology. Here is the advanced attack helicopter. Chemical defense. Patriot. Division air defense gun. And there are 109 other programs in this part of the budget. But then, although they don't represent much more than about a third of the dollars in the budget, look where most of the programs that we have to pass judgment on are. 581 programs, each of which is below $25 million in value. A couple of years ago Tony and I added up the number of projects that fall within each program. Each program will have three or four projects within it that in and of themselves can be quite different. There are over 3,000 projects individual projects, that the Department requests money on each year. I have brought along one of the Justification Books, and those of you would have been on the committee before are familiar with them. You will recall, we have four services and several defense agencies. The Army sends over three books. This is just one of the three volumes that they send over to justify their request. The Air Force will have a book of comparable size, the Navy, and Marines will have three books, and the defense agencies will have one book, and when you stack them all up, they'll stand about this high. There's over 9,000 pages of justification material that we get exposed to each year. Mr. MOLLOHAN. Are those justification prepared by in-house people or by consultants? Dr. COOPER. Primarily by in-house people. The way they do that is they will go out to the various commands and ask them to provide the justification for the projects. That will come back to the Pentagon, and then the Pentagon puts the final books together, their budget people. Mr. DICKINSON. I would just like to point out that we have only two staff people who are dedicated to this. They have a whole building full of experts over at the Pentagon putting all this together and justifying it. We have only two staff people who handle the whole program, and I think they do an admirable job. I just don't know how they do it. Quite often though, and it is unfortunate, the only thing you can do is wait until the trouble surfaces and then just deal with problems, and you don't really get to look at the relative picture, just emergency situations. Mr. WHITE. Does our staff have the availability of computers, and would it help? Mr. BATTISTA. I have a pocket calculator, I think Tom has one, and that's about it. Dr. COOPER. Mine only has pluses on it and Tony only has minuses on his. I don't think we really need computers. It's just a matter of getting down and digging, and I think over a period of years you become familiar with the projects. On these programs up here, the big ones, if you ask our opinion on what we think should be done, we can give it to you. But most of these you are familiar with and you, really, I don't think, need a heck of a lot of staff help in making up your mind what needs to be done. Where we spend the majority of our time are on these programs which you may not be familiar with. When we find a problem of any sort we try to surface it to you because, quite frankly, there is no way you would ever have time to go in a look at each one of these programs. So many of these you'll never hear about. We'll never bring them up. The Department may testify on them. But we spend a good portion of our time on the road and in meetings here. Both contractors and Defense will come in and talk, and when we see problem areas we look at that as our job to surface that to you. Mr. WHITE. Let me ask, Mr. Chairman, do you have the advantage, to conserve your time or to help your time, of the GAO for this purpose, or do they have the capability to be of assistance in this? Dr. COOPER. Let me take a crack at it, and then Tony can comment. I personally don't find the GAO to be of much assistance, and the reason is that I personally don't think they have the technical competence to deal with weapons system issues. As far as costs and that sort of thing, I think they do. Most of the time when we get their reports they are at least 6 months old by the time they're published and the problems that they highlight usually have been taken care of. So you are continually putting out the fire with the GAO reports, problems that may have existed 6 months ago, but by the time the report get released they are gone and there are a new set of problems. So they are not current enough. Mr. WHITE. Let me ask the last question, Mr. Chairman. What do you need to make your job more effective-more staff? Mr. BATTISTA. No. I think just the communications link that we have with the members of this subcommittee and the members of the committee basically. Tom, you speak up if you differ. But I think just the communications channel that we have and the fact that we can come to you, can surface a problem, and we have no ax to grind or no constituent interest in any of these things. We'll tell you exactly how we feel about it. But I don't think we need anything else. As far as the GAO, I would like to add that my problem with the GAO is they're totally negative on everything. All of these reports that I read, I think they're overstepping their charter. They're very good_accountants; they're very good for auditing functions. But somehow in recent years they've gotten into the weapon systems evaluation business, and I think they do a lousy job of it. They'll tell you 40 things that are wrong with a system, most of which are not well founded. But they never point out what's good about a system. They'll tell you Aegis hasn't been subjected to testing, and when I talked to them about the thousands of hours we've gotten at the Norton Sound and the Combat System Engineering Development site and things like that, they're kind of at a loss to explain why they didn't cover that. So I have a serious problem with the GAO insofar as I think they've become political tools in recent years as far as weapon systems go. They'll tell you anything you want about a system that's wrong but very little that's right. That's just my evaluation. Tom, I don't know how you view them. Mr. MOLLOHAN. I'm not defending GAO, but don't they have a policy when they find something that's questionable-and I'm talking about the military-they sit down with the responsible people and lay before them the problem as they see it, and discuss that problem, and if it's a valid one the military corrects it, the Defense Department corrects it, even though the report may no longer be viable, and the issue settled. Mr. BATTISTA. That is the GAO as it ought to be, as opposed to the GAO as it's working these days. Mr. MOLLOHAN. That's the way I understood it was. For example, I've talked to numerous project managers—and I'm not taking up for all project managers because some have been less than candid with us before-but there are many allegations that the GAO has made, for example, against the Aegis weapon system, against the Minuteman, against the MX that I don't think are very well founded, and I think they're at a loss to prove their case, and they have not coordinated with the program managers, or in cases where they have they've made a decision to ignore everything he had said. I suggest you might approach Admiral Meyer with his experience in the recent GAO report on the CG-47 program. He'll be before us 2 weeks from now. Dr. COOPER. The other thing I would add, too, is I think the GAO's work is of higher quality when they're looking at programs that are in production. One of the problems that concerns me is that they'll look at programs that are in the development stage and point out problems. I don't know of a program that's been in development that hasn't had problems. That's part of the reason you have a research and development process, to go out and test and find problems and correct them, and many times they'll be two or three steps behind where the Department has found problems and has made the correction and it's moved on, but they'll wave the red flag like that's terminal if there is a problem in the R. & D. stage. Mr. Chairman, that basically is what I wanted to present in the way of a brief synopsis of our R. & D. process, just to give you an idea of some of the programs. One other thing I did at Mr. Dickinson's request-and Mr. Dickinson, it's up to you, if you would like to go through it-you asked about the SAR's, the selected acquisition report, and Ruth has some material that she can pass out, which basically is that material I gave you yesterday in full committee. That gives a summary of the last SAR. Basically, what the SAR is is a report that the Department puts out every quarter that talks about the technical performance of the various systems it has under development and in production and the cost, and it looks at the program from about nine different ways, and basically usually comes up with the bottom line on what the program was estimated to cost and what it costs now, and also what it was supposed to have done in terms of performance and what it is doing now in terms of meeting that performance requirement. I find these much handier than GAO reports, just to contrast them, because they are more complete as a rule than GAO reports. Mr. MOLLOHAN. Is this report confidential? Dr. COOPER. Mr. Mollohan, if you have the summary page that says "Department of Defense Selected Acquisition Report as of December 31, 1980." Mr. DICKINSON. That's what she just gave him. Dr. COOPER. That one is not confidential. The one that Ruth is handing out is, and this is just an example that Ruth is handing out of a typical SAR report, and I've chosen here the Navy's LAMPS antisubmarine warfare system. The first page that Diane handed out of the first set of sheets there is a summary of all the SAR's. When they come over every quarter they are in a book that's about 6 inches thick. This is a handy summary of it. [The following information was received for the record:] Department OF DEFENSE SELECTED ACQUISITION REPORTS AS OF DECEMBER 31, 1980 An updated summary of DoD plans for the development and procurement of selected major defense systems has been submitted to the Congress. The Selected Acquisition Reports (SARS) are prepared every three months to provide the latest estimates of technical, schedule, quantity, and cost information concerning the major defense systems now approved within the Department of Defense. The cost estimates provided in the 47 SAR programs include research, engineering, procurement, and military construction. Total program costs are updated to reflect actual cost on delivered systems, as well as anticipated cost for future procurements, including increased allowances for anticipated escalation. The latest report, as of December 31, 1980, includes all changes to previous reports required by the Defense Appropriations Act for fiscal year 1981 and fiscal year 1982 budget requests now before the Congress. In addition, revisions in this report reflect the latest Five Year Defense Plan (FYDP) which includes, for the first time, the complete program for fiscal year 1986. Reports on the 47 major acquisition programs transmitted to the Congress for December 31, 1980, reflect a total current estimate of program acquisition cost of $310.2 billion. This compares to a current estimate of $261.8 billion for the 46 major acquisitions in the September 30, 1980 reports. A reconciliation of the program adjustments for the two programs deleted and the three programs added and changes in the current estimate are provided below. |